Update 2007-11-02:
Diverse Typos korrigiert...
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Ganz üble News gab es Ende der Woche vom Kalifornischen Immobilienmarkt:
- kalifornische Kreditgeber verschickten im 3. Quartal insgesamt 72.571 NODs. Das sind 34,5% mehr als im 2. Quartal - und 166,6% mehr als noch ein Jahr zuvor!
- mittlerweile konnten nur noch 45,9% der säumigen Schuldner den Foreclosure-Prozess durch begleichen der rückständigen Summe oder durch Refinanzierung oder Verkauf der Immobilie stoppen. Vor einem Jahr waren es noch 80,9%!
- im 3. Quartal wurden insgesamt 24.209 Immobilien durch den Foreclosure-Prozess zwangsversteigert. Das waren 38,7% mehr als im 2. Quartal und 604,8% mehr als im Jahr zuvor!
Dazu zwei Grafiken:
Und ein paar ausgewählte Artikel aus amerikanischen Zeitungen:
San Francisco Chronicle:
Foreclosures in Bay Area, statewide hit record highs in 3rd quarter
Carolyn Said, Chronicle Staff Writer
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Lenders foreclosed on a record 3,242 Bay Area homes in the third quarter - a 622 percent increase from the same time last year - and there's no sign of relief ahead, according to a real estate report Friday.
Statewide, foreclosure activity hit all-time highs for the quarter. Bank repossessions were up more than 600 percent, and late notices were 2.7 times higher than a year ago, according to DataQuick Information Services, a research firm in La Jolla (San Diego County).
Most ominously, the report showed that default notices, the first step in the foreclosure process, were growing more rapidly in the state and Bay Area compared with last year and earlier this year.
"There is no sign in these numbers that we're close to turning the corner where foreclosure activity levels off," said Andrew LePage, an analyst with DataQuick. "It is continuing to build and building even faster."
The vast majority of recent foreclosures stem from subprime loans made to people with poor credit, many of whom put no money down. After an introductory period with low interest rates, such loans often reset sharply higher, so monthly mortgage payments increase by hundreds of dollars.
At the same time, home prices have stagnated or fallen, so struggling homeowners cannot refinance because they owe more than their houses are worth.
A fairly typical case is that of Kathy Quintanilla, who bought a two-bedroom home in Oakland's Fruitvale district two years ago with 100 percent financing. When her mortgage reset in August, her payments went from $2,800 a month to $3,500. It is slated to reset again in February.
"I'm finding I can't refinance," said Quintanilla, who said the home is now worth about $350,000 - $48,000 less than she paid.
Quintanilla, who works as an office manager, has not yet missed a payment, but "I'm living paycheck to paycheck," she said. She got a roommate to bring in extra income, and she is trying to sell some of her clothes and shoes. She called her lender without reaching someone who could help.
She is thinking about a short sale - selling the house for less than she owes on the mortgage. Such a sale requires lender approval and can have adverse tax consequences, because the amount of "forgiven" debt is treated as ordinary income.
"The IRS would come after me for the difference," Quintanilla said. "But I'm considering it - is a short sale the best option for me, is it a way out?"
At an emotional level, that is a hard decision, she said.
"I would love to keep my house. I'm the first one in my family to even own my own home."
Most of the foreclosure fallout is in California's interior, from Bakersfield to Sacramento. Half of the foreclosure activity is concentrated in 293 of the state's 1,465 ZIP codes, almost all of them in that region, DataQuick said. Those ZIP codes as a group experienced annual price appreciation of 34 percent in early 2005, peaked at a median price of $399,000 a year ago, and since have fallen 11.7 percent off that peak.
Price appreciation and decline was less severe in the state's other 1,172 ZIP codes, which are less heavily affected by foreclosure. In those areas, appreciation peaked at 25 percent in mid-2004, and the recent median price of $575,000 is only 2.5 percent below the peak.
Loans in Merced, San Joaquin and Riverside counties were most likely to go into default, DataQuick said. The three counties with the lowest likelihood of default were all in the Bay Area: San Francisco, Marin and San Mateo.
In the Bay Area, the most lender repossession activity was in Contra Costa County, where 1,159 homeowners lost their residences, followed by Alameda County (674) and Solano (495).
Across California, the real estate frenzy reached a high around August 2005, when the most mortgages, both for purchases and refinances, were funded.
Because mortgages tend to go bad early in their lifecycle, that would imply that foreclosures should be peaking now, LePage said - but that does not appear to be the case.
Notices of default stood at 72,571 in California for the July-to-September period, up 166.6 percent from a year ago and up 34.5 percent from the preceding quarter. A single house may have more than one loan, so the 72,571 late notices represented 68,746 different residences.
More than half of default notices (54.1 percent) resulted in homes being taken back by lenders. A year ago, only 19.1 percent of default notices led to repossessions.
In the Bay Area, 10,427 homeowners received notices of default in the quarter, 2.7 times more than 3,797 a year ago. The most such notices were in Contra Costa, where 3,216 homeowners were late on payments, more than triple the number a year ago.
DataQuick said the number of homes repossessed in California and the Bay Area were the highest since it began tracking foreclosures in 1988. Likewise, the number of default notices for the state and the region were the highest since it began tracking them in 1992.
Statewide, 24,209 homes were taken back by lenders in the third quarter, also the highest level recorded. That was up 604.8 percent from last year's third quarter, when 3,435 California homes were lost to foreclosure, and a 38.7 percent increase from the preceding April-to-June quarter of this year.
"We're deep into uncharted territory because we've never been in this boat where the housing market is weakening so much in the absence of a recession," LePage said. "We've never had this widespread use of very risky unconventional loans."
latimes.com
California home foreclosures again set a record
The third quarter's total surpasses 24,000, which is a record. 'It's working its way to the Westside,' an agent says.
By Peter Y. Hong, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
October 27, 2007
Californians lost their homes to foreclosure in record numbers for a second straight quarter, and the trend is creeping into affluent communities, figures released Friday show.
Foreclosures statewide hit a new high of 24,209, besting the previous record by 39%, according to DataQuick Information Systems. Default notices -- the first step toward foreclosure -- rose to 72,571 for the three months ended Sept. 30, breaking a record set in 1996.
Separately, the Census Bureau reported that the nation's homeownership rate fell for a fourth straight quarter, the longest decline since 1981. The agency said foreclosures helped push the number of vacant homes to a record 17.9 million.
In California, foreclosures are concentrated largely in outlying areas such as the Inland Empire, the Antelope Valley and the Central Valley, where swarms of people with modest incomes used loans with low "teaser" rates to finance their purchases. But data released Friday show that the pain is spreading to higher-priced neighborhoods in Los Angeles and Orange counties and is even trickling into wealthy communities.
In four Newport Beach-area ZIP Codes, for example, there were 11 foreclosures in the third quarter, up from just three in the same period last year. There were seven foreclosures in Bel-Air, and none a year ago.
"It's definitely increasing," said Joyce Essex, a Coldwell Banker real estate agent based in Beverly Hills who specializes in selling foreclosed homes.
Essex said most of her properties were in the San Fernando Valley and South Los Angeles, but about 10% of her listings are now in a more affluent part of town.
"It's working its way to the Westside. The Westside is always last to get hit," Essex said of the foreclosure wave, based on her experience in the 1990s downturn.
In the last six months, Essex's staff has grown from four to 14 to handle the volume of foreclosure work.
In modestly priced neighborhoods, she said, borrowers who are now facing foreclosure had often relied on no-money-down loans and other types of exotic mortgages. When the introductory rates expired, they couldn't make their payments.
At the high end, Essex said, foreclosure victims tend to be "people who kept pulling money out of their houses, using equity [loans] to pay credit cards, buy cars, go on trips."
"They used their homes to get cash and kept pulling equity out," she said.
Laguna Niguel broker Steve DeVre said he had shifted more of his work from sales to foreclosures, including evaluating troubled properties for banks.
"I've been barraged in the last 30 days" by foreclosure work, he said.
But John Karevoll, DataQuick's chief analyst, still sees foreclosure numbers in high-end areas as negligible.
"They are just a smattering," he said.
The handfuls of foreclosures popping up in areas such as La Cañada Flintridge and Laguna Beach, Karevoll said, may not even be related to the real estate market, tied instead to job loss, divorce or other hardships.
Overall, however, foreclosures are expected to continue escalating as large numbers of variable-rate mortgages reset upward in the next year, leaving homeowners with payments that are higher than they can afford.
That could flood the housing market with discounted, bank-owned homes -- possibly stalling a recovery for several years, some analysts say.
Even if the Federal Reserve continues cutting interest rates, "it's still going to be shocking," said Edward E. Leamer, director of UCLA's Anderson Forecast.
According to DataQuick, the third quarter saw a combined 13,314 foreclosures in the seven Southern California counties of Imperial, Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego and Ventura. That's up from 1,960 in the third quarter of last year -- an increase of 579%.
Los Angeles County led the way with 3,627 foreclosures, many of those in the Antelope Valley. Riverside was a close second, with 3,462 foreclosures.
In addition, 41,062 Southern California homeowners received notices that they were in default on their loans. About half of such homeowners typically escape foreclosure by bringing their payments current, selling their homes or refinancing, according to DataQuick.
Lower interest rates and easier terms offered by lenders may help some homeowners, but probably not enough to make up for the huge new obligations faced by borrowers who took mortgages with artificially low rates, Leamer said.
Statewide, about half of the default activity was concentrated in the Inland Empire and Central Valley.
The areas with the most default notices had earlier seen torrid gains in property values -- rising as high as 34% a year, DataQuick reported.
The mortgage deals driving those high prices proved too good to be true, DataQuick President Marshall Prentice said.
"We know now, in emerging detail, that a lot of these loans shouldn't have been made," Prentice said.
In the Inland Empire and Central Valley, foreclosed properties have been selling for about 10% less than other homes in their areas, DataQuick said.
As foreclosures multiply in Los Angeles and Orange counties, it is too early to gauge the effect these properties will have on home values there, said Patrick Veling, president of Real Data Strategies Inc., a Brea real estate consulting firm.
"Is there a tipping point?" he asked. "I don't know, but we haven't reached it yet."
Steven Thomas, president of Re/Max Real Estate Services in Aliso Viejo, expects foreclosures to hurt prices in his area next year.
Foreclosures and short sales -- properties offered for less than the outstanding loan amount -- account for 10% of Orange County listings, Thomas said. That has kept inventories up now, even though they traditionally fall this time of year.
"We can't come off those highs [inventories] when we keep getting more bank-owned listings," he said.
peter.hong@latimes.com
mercurynews.com:
Mortgage defaults hit record
MANY FIRST-TIME BUYERS SEE FORECLOSURE THREAT
By Sue McAllister
Mercury News
Article Launched: 10/27/2007 01:35:25 AM PDT
With home sales plummeting, values sliding and mortgage companies newly picky about who can refinance, more California homeowners than ever before faced foreclosure last quarter.
Statewide, mortgage companies sent 72,571 "notices of default" to borrowers in the third quarter, eclipsing a record of 61,541 set in 1996, according to DataQuick Information Systems. In the nine-county Bay Area, a record number of homeowners received such notices, which are the first step in the foreclosure process. Several counties, including Santa Clara, Alameda and Contra Costa, also broke records for home-loan defaults.
But the default and foreclosure problems in the valley are mild compared with inland counties where recent sales were dominated by first-time buyers who purchased with little or no money down. Many now find their payments rising and home values falling, making refinancing almost impossible.
"Where we're seeing the biggest increase in defaults is in the Central Valley, the Inland Empire" and in Contra Costa County, said Delores Conway of the Lusk Center for Real Estate at the University of Southern California, who based her assessment on the changes from the second quarter to third quarter of this year. Defaults rose 49 percent in San Joaquin County last quarter, for example, from the previous one.
In Santa Clara County, 1,655 notices were mailed to borrowers last quarter, up 30 percent from the second quarter and 147 percent from the third quarter of 2006. Last quarter's total eclipsed the previous record, set in the third quarter of 1992, when 1,510 notices went out. Default notices are typically sent when homeowners have missed a few monthly mortgage payments.
Krysta Dodd is trying hard not to become one of the default statistics. Dodd is a legal assistant for a law firm in Santa Clara, and her husband works for a medical robotics company in Sunnyvale. In 2005, they bought a four-bedroom home in Patterson, about 80 miles from Santa Clara, in Stanislaus County. Like many buyers in recent years, they used a first mortgage equal to 80 percent of their home's $439,000 purchase price and a second mortgage to make up the other 20 percent.
In August, the interest rate on their first loan went from 5.85 percent to 7.375 percent, and their combined payments for both loans went from $3,091 a month to $3,843 a month. With rate increases still to come, they want to refinance. But with no equity in their home - which Dodd says is now worth about $350,000 - they may not be able to. With more borrowers in default, few lenders will make "100 percent financing" loans now.
"We want to stay put," Dodd, 35, said. She and her husband are both working overtime at their jobs to stay current on their payments. In the long run, she thinks her house will be a good asset. "We're just hoping and praying that the market turns around."
Part of what's fueling foreclosure activity is that many mortgage lenders in recent years relaxed their criteria, allowing borrowers to get adjustable-rate loans at low rates to buy homes that they probably could not afford using conventional fixed-rate loans. Many borrowers took the loans, hoping to refinance into a better loan in a few years. But refinancing is no longer a slam-dunk. Once their rates rise, many owners can't afford to keep paying.
Falling home values drive foreclosures, too. When values drop, fewer people can sell their homes for enough to pay off their lenders and avoid foreclosure.
Currently, the DataQuick report said, about 46 percent of homeowners who receive default notices escape foreclosure, whether by selling, refinancing or getting up to date with their payments. A year ago, 80 percent did so.
When a home is foreclosed upon, a "trustee deed" is filed with the county. Trustee deeds hit new highs in the third quarter in Santa Cruz County and all Bay Area counties except San Francisco, DataQuick said. In Santa Clara County, for example, there were 410 foreclosures last quarter, beating the second-quarter 1994 record of 296.
Half of the state's default activity is occurring in 293 ZIP codes, almost all in the Central Valley or Inland Empire (San Bernardino and Riverside counties) in Southern California, DataQuick said. Antioch's 94531 ZIP was on that list, however, as was East San Jose's 95116. When taken as a group, median home prices in the worst-hit ZIP codes have dropped 11.7 percent since their peak in the third quarter of 2006.
In the other 1,172 ZIP codes, the median price dropped 2.5 percent from its high point in the second quarter of this year.
"If there are foreclosures in the area, that changes home prices and it changes buyers' expectations," Conway said. "They sit on the fence even longer."
And in the interrelated spiral of foreclosures, home prices and reluctant buyers, equilibrium is reached when prices have fallen enough and rents have risen enough that renting no longer makes sense, she said.
But Conway said she doubts defaults have hit their peak yet: "It's going to take a while to work through this."
In a monthly report on the number of homes for sale in various counties, real estate firm Movoto, based in Redwood City, said 13 percent of homes on the market in Santa Clara County as of Sept. 30 appear to be distress sales, in which the seller is either trying to avoid foreclosure, or the property already has been repossessed by a lender. That was up from about 11 percent a month earlier.
The situation is worse in other counties: Contra Costa County's multiple listing service shows 25 percent distress sales, for example, and Alameda County has nearly 17 percent.
Also on Friday, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that a record 17.9 million American homes were vacant in the third quarter, as lenders took possession of more foreclosed properties. The figure is 7.8 percent higher than a year earlier.
